When you think of applications that are bound for the cloud, high-speed financial trading is probably not one that immediately comes to mind. But there's actually quite a lot happening on this front, writes Pete Harris in a blog post at Low-Latency.com, a site that tracks news in the algorithmic trading sector. Last year we covered the unveiling of the NYSE cloud platform for traders. Harris reports that there are also offerings from Sungard, Finessa, CFN Services and FCM360, among others.

"It's still early days for the cloud and low latency combination, and still some FUD to overcome (security, lack of control, performance)," he writes ."But the trend is underway and accelerating. As trading firms turn to big data approaches to help them drive trading, so the cloud will be the natural place to host that big data and make it available as a service. There will still be a place for those firms operating in the single digits of microseconds latency, but it will cost them to do it. For many others - perhaps many new entrants with innovative business models - clouds will be the way to go."